Understanding Audience

Knowing who your company or entity is communicating to, understanding who is impacted by your idea, finding out best practices in sourcing ideas and process improvements from your audience

Creative Problem Solving Technique: Become the Problem

When we are trying to generate ideas in order to solve a problem, whether through anticonventional thinking, brainstorming or another method, we typically distance ourself slightly from the problem. We look for ideas on how to improve our company’s product, how to deliver better customer service, how to cut costs or alternative business models. In all of these cases, we separate ourselves from the problem and, by so doing, we potentially limit our understanding of the problem. Why not take a different approach and become the problem?

Ideascale2021-12-03T10:32:23-08:00May 31st, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Strategies|Tags: anticonventional thinking, brainstorm, brainstorming, creative, Creativity, ideas, problem, Problem Solving, solve|

7 Key Steps to Successful Open Innovation in China

More and more Multinational Companies (MNCs) are turning to China for open innovation for several important reasons. Find out what those reasons are and learn more about best practices to succeed at open innovation in the unique Chinese market. This article delves deeper into how harvest the power of innovation from one of the world’s most populous and fastest-growing countries

Ideascale2021-12-03T07:35:04-08:00May 17th, 2012|Categories: Open Innovation, Strategies|Tags: china, MNC, mncs, multinational companies, Open Innovation|

Demystifying the Path to Technology Partnerships

There is often a considerable amount of ambiguity at the outset of open innovation partnerships. Quite often, the technology customer is considerably larger than the provider and is being pursued versus being the pursuer. The technology provider almost never knows the full extent of what needs to be demonstrated in order to earn a customer's business commitment. They are also quite often reluctant to ask so as to avoid offending the other party or seeming ignorant or unsophisticated. How can this situation be improved?

Ideascale2021-12-03T07:25:12-08:00May 10th, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Open Innovation, Strategies|Tags: action standards, Business, communicate, invest, Open Innovation, partnerships, risk, risk-free, strategic partnership, success criteria, Technology, technology transfer, transparent|

Observation Grounds Collaborative Innovation

The practice of collaborative innovation starts with observation: the discipline to see and grasp the nature of the work, the end user’s environment, or the world at large. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores how people who lead their organization’s collaborative innovation practice can reinforce community members’ observational skills.

Ideascale2021-12-03T07:01:04-08:00April 3rd, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: Best Practices, co-creation, collaborative innovation, community, customer engagement, design thinking, incentive, lean innovation, observation, Open Innovation, reflection, social media, team management, virtual|

Innovation Through Co-creation: Consumers Can be Creative

A new trend in business and product development is ‘co-creation’. By its very name it implies a collaboration between the company and some other entity. In this case it is the consumer who partners in the creation of value. The term ‘co-creation’ is not new, however, but is now receiving more attention - driven largely through the increasing use of the Internet and social media websites - as companies endeavour to differentiate themselves from the competition.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:16:51-08:00March 26th, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Enabling Factors, Open Innovation|Tags: co-creation, consumer insights, Crowdsourcing, customer engagement, focus group, market research, Open Innovation, Product Development, social media, value creation|

Characteristics of Winning Communities for Social Product Innovation

Internal and external communities can bring real value to your organization by providing ideas and feedback for the innovation pipeline. Amy Kenly takes a look at several leading practices companies should consider when managing or participating in these communities.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:16:46-08:00March 21st, 2012|Categories: Evergreen, Open Innovation|Tags: community, company culture, front end of innovation, incremental innovation, Innovation Strategy, Product Development, social media, social product innovation|

The Problem with Open Innovation Web Portals

Michael Fruhling doesn't like open innovation portals, in general. What's his problem with them?

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:14:50-08:00March 21st, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Open Innovation|Tags: boiler plate, collaborative relationships, concierge service, consumer products companies, direct collaboration, direct interaction, fundamental, gatekeepers, host company, impersonal, lessons learned, Open Innovation, opportunity incubation, platform, rejection, solution, submissions, submitters, understand, user experience, web portal|

Opening the Practice of Collaborative Innovation to the End User

Engaging end users in co-creation deepens the bonds between the organization and them. The activity can deliver economic value to all parties involved. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins highlights the critical questions that campaign teams will want to address when they pursue externally focused collaboration.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:14:37-08:00March 13th, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Open Innovation|Tags: co-creation, co-discovery, collaborative innovation, community, customer engagement, end user, end user engagement, enquiry-led, Eric von Hippel, goal setting, innovation campaign, social media|

Growing B2B Services: 3 Trends to Act Upon Now

What does it take for companies to market new, innovative capabilities as a service? The challenge to expand beyond products is daunting, but as market exemplars show, the returns on the investment can be worth it. The case studies explored in this article illustrate the extent to which services demand a premium in the market, drive differentiation from the competition, and build loyalty.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:11:56-08:00March 5th, 2012|Categories: Strategies|Tags: B2B, brand loyalty, Business Model Innovation, case study, community, customer engagement, digital platform, disruptive innovation, engagement, in-depth article, loyalty, organizational structure, platform, productivity, research, service-based innovation, strategic advantage|

How to Understand the Notoriously Irrational Consumer

Companies put in lots of Market Research efforts to nail down the needs, wants, wishes and whims of the elusive consumers. But, how reliable are the results? Are there logical – or illogical – reasons why consumers sometimes say one thing and still do the other? In this blog, Bengt Järrehult uses the findings of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Laureate in Economy 2002 to understand more of this in the area of innovation.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:11:54-08:00February 28th, 2012|Categories: Innovation Psychology|Tags: consumer insights, consumer research, customer research, Daniel Kahneman, early adopters, endowment effect, market research, Product Development, psychology, status quo|

Social Media Hardly Utilized For Insights: Competitive Advantages Diminish

The figures are clear, Emailvision’s survey shows that just 6,2% of the marketers are using social media to gain insights into customer preferences. According to a study by the Chartered Institute of Marketing only 20% of marketers use Facebook for market research. This means not fully utilizing the opportunities of social media and their data. Social media can provide an unparalled scale of real-time data, help identify unmediated consumer opinion and competitor perceptions or offer the ability to connect with those 'creative consumers' to co-create the solution with and strategically embed the outside-in perspective in the organization.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:11:29-08:00February 17th, 2012|Categories: Blog Archive|Tags: customer insights, customer research, report, social media|

Recasting the Internal Communications Group’s Charter through Collaborative Innovation

Organizations fund internal communications groups to develop and disseminate the central narrative for the group. Changes wrought by the Digital Age have usurped this group’s role as the exclusive interpreter and messenger for intra-firm information, however. In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins advocates that internal communications reframe and refresh its charter by embracing the practice of collaborative innovation in order to facilitate engagement amongst staff.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:08:38-08:00February 7th, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation|Tags: campaign team, collaborative innovation, Communication, communications, company culture, internal communications, mergers & acquisitions, social media, sponsor, Stakeholders|

How to Break Out of the Commodity Trap: A Lesson from Mickey Mouse

Look at almost any industry and you will see companies struggling to differentiate what they have to offer from everything else in the marketplace. So it’s hardly surprising that one of the most common complaints I hear from senior executives is “My product is becoming commoditized. Is there a way out?”

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:02:57-08:00January 12th, 2012|Categories: Strategies|Tags: case study, china, commoditization, differentiation, globalization, modular products, modularity, Problem Solving, standards|

Sourcing Crowds for Out of the Box Ideas

People who practice collaborative innovation at times seek out of the box ideas for a given challenge. In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins applies work from Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman by way of offering insights on selecting crowds that can achieve novelty.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:02:50-08:00January 10th, 2012|Categories: Collaborative Innovation|Tags: anchoring, campaign team, case study, collaborative innovation, Crowdsourcing, environment, innovation campaign, intuition, Open Innovation|

Don’t let Market Research Myopia Distract you from Innovation

Customer and market research, competitive benchmarking, and focusing on market share could be detrimental to your organization's future performance. These approaches are critical improvement tools. Top performing organizations have turned them into a disciplined and useful science. But they can also lead to "me-too" followership or - even worse - commodity products and services that compete only on price.

Ideascale2021-12-02T18:02:44-08:00January 9th, 2012|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: business development teams, competitive benchmarking, consumer insights, creative, customer, customer engagement, customer research, empathic innovation, ethnography, focus group, hands on, innovation, management systems, market appeal, market intelligence, market research, market share, market understanding, network, organization competencies, patterns, planning sessions, Problem Solving, Product Development, tools, what if|